Sugar Sense
Sugar occurs naturally in many foods such as fruit and milk products. These foods
are healthy choices because they also have important nutrients. However, many
foods have sugar added to them. Added sugar does not provide any nutrients, only
calories, and should be limited.
Large amounts of sugar are added to foods where you might not expect it like:
 muffins, cookies and scones
 granola bars
 flavoured yogurt or milk
 ice cream and frozen desserts
Did you know that flavoured yogurt tubes marketed for kids have 1 teaspoon of
added sugar per yogurt tube? When you consider only sugar, flavoured yogurt tubes
have more sugar than the same amount of pop! While yogurt tubes do provide
important nutrients such as calcium, they also provide a lot of sugar.
Sugar can be added to foods as honey, maple syrup, molasses, sugar or corn syrup.
Even though some of these are considered natural sweeteners, they are still just
sugar and do not provide any nutrients. All types of added sugar should be limited.
In order to keep added sugar to a minimum, our childcare centre serves plain milk,
unsweetened fruit and fruit purees (e.g. applesauce) and homemade baked goods.
When we make baked goods from scratch the amount of added sugar can be
reduced or replaced with pureed fruit.
100% juice is not served at the childcare centre, even though it has no added sugars.
100% juice is very high in sugar and provides the same nutrition as whole fruit, but
does not have fibre. Many children do not eat enough fibre. Too much juice can lead
to cavities. Juice can also fill up children’s tummies so that they do not eat healthy
food at meals and snacks. For this reason whole fruit is served instead of juice. Low
sugar drink choices such as water and plain milk are offered to the children to drink.
By limiting the added sugar we serve to the children at the centre, we are
supporting their enjoyment of healthy, naturally sweet foods.